COMMON FACTORS INFLUENCING SUCCESS IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT

Stephen Harris, Principal, Northern Beaches Christian School, Director, Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning, Australia

In 2006, the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning — the research and development unit of Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS), sought to develop a ‘best practice’ framework to help steer one of its new programs — the provision of fully distance-mode online courses for senior secondary students. As the first individual school to do so in New South Wales, NBCS looked to case-based exemplars from education systems in Scandinavia where this type of program had already been in operation for at least three years. The framework was created after analyzing common factors identified from consultation with a range of schools delivering senior courses via distributed learning modes in Iceland and Finland.